VENTURE CAPITAL POST

State oil giant Saudi Aramco [SDABO.UL] has put on hold its deepwater oil and gas exploration and drilling activities in the Red Sea because of high costs as it economizes in an environment of low crude prices, industry sources said on Sunday.

For years he was a lone voice in the aviation industry despite being one of its best-known economists, a Cassandra-like figure whose warnings of a slump in oil prices went unheeded.

Arab OPEC producers expect global oil prices to rebound to between $70 and $80 a barrel by the end of next year as a global economic recovery revives demand, OPEC delegates said this week in the first indication of where the group expects oil markets to ‎stabilize in the medium term.

Saudi Arabia's oil minister told fellow OPEC members they must combat the U.S. shale oil boom, arguing against cutting crude output in order to depress prices and undermine the profitability of North American producers.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi is making his first visits in years to fellow exporters Venezuela and Mexico, although tumbling oil prices are not the stated purpose of the trip, according to officials and sources.

Egypt has paid back $500 million to Qatar and will soon return the remainder of the money the Gulf state deposited into the Egyptian central bank after the 2011 revolution, the bank's governor said on Saturday.

The drop in oil prices to their lowest in two years has caught many observers off guard, coming against a backdrop of the worst violence in Iraq this decade, heightened tensions between the West and Russia, and sanctions against Iran.

An estimated 84 megawatts of power will be generated after a pipeline investment is made in the Gulf region.